The ZTE Score is a fantastic value for music lovers on Cricket Wireless, but only an average smartphone otherwise.

Muve Music, Alernatives, and ConclusionsWe took a detailed look at the Muve Music service back on the Samsung Suede ($79.99, 3 stars). At $10 per month, Muve is an affordable unlimited mobile music service. When we first tried Muve it was very buggy, and severely lacking for indie music. Luckily, the service has improved a great deal since then.

Cricket says Muve includes music from four major labels. When you open it up, you get five different choices. My Music lets you navigate your music library, listen to music, and create playlists. Get Music lets you search Muve's catalog and download songs. My DJ is a set of premade, regularly-updated playlists. Get Social lets you browse other Muve users' music libraries, send them messages, and download music they listen to. Shazam allows you to identify the artist and title of any song you hear playing with the help of your phone. There are also Help, Music Player, and Settings icons at the bottom of the screen.

Unfortunately, there's no still no one-touch button to get you back to the Now Playing screen or pause the song you're listening to. So if you exit Muve and still have music playing in the background, you must open it back up and navigate through a complicated series of menus to turn it off.

You can listen to music on standard wired headphones or a stereo Bluetooth headset. The songs are super-compressed using the HE-AACv2 codec at 32Kbps so they take less than a minute to download. Unfortunately, that makes for less than ideal sound quality. Over a pair of wired earbuds, most of the songs I listened to sounded a bit tinny and lacking in bass. But even my own music I loaded onto the microSD card was lacking bass, so I suspect that's a fault of the phone itself. Cricket says songs are generally 700KB-1MB, so you should be able to hold about 3,000 songs at a time; you can check what percentage of space you have left in the Settings menu.

There's plenty of music to choose from, as Muve's selection has improved considerably. I didn't have trouble finding plenty of good indie music this time around. The Magnetic Fields, the Mountain Goats, Yo La Tengo—all were present, with plenty of albums to boot. I was even able to find an EP and single from Real Estate, a little-known New Jersey band, along with their two full-length albums. The rest of Muve's selection is solid as well. Most music lovers will find lots to like here.

But there's lots to like on Rhapsody and Spotify, too. MetroPCS plan aside, you can download the Rhapsody app onto any Android smartphone and pay $9.99 per month for unlimited music. And Spotify, which seems to have taken the U.S. by storm over the last six months, offers its premium service for $9.99 per month. It allows you unlimited access to stream clear, 320kbps songs, and features a truly diverse music library. Of course, streaming high quality music is going to eat up your phone's battery life much faster than downloading a small file, but both Rhapsody and Spotify also allow you to download songs or sync playlists directly to your device.

Ultimately, what it comes down to is which service has the music you're interested in. Take a good look at each before making your decision, and choose the one that has the most songs you want to listen to.

It's hard to argue with unlimited talk, text, Web, and music for $65 per month without a contract. I just wish the Score itself was a better phone. If you want Muve, the only other smartphone to support it is the $149.99 Samsung Vitality. We haven't reviewed it yet, but it's essentially the same phone as the Samsung Admire ($79, 3 stars) we reviewed over on MetroPCS. Based on that, we expect it to perform right on par with the ZTE Score, so the biggest choice to make is which look you prefer.

If you want unlimited music with your phone plan but prefer Rhapsody, MetroPCS offers the aforementioned Samsung Admire, as well as the recently released Samsung Galaxy Attain 4G ($199). We haven't reviewed it yet, but it has all the specs of a solid, midrange smartphone.

If you don't need an unlimited music plan built into your phone bill, the Huawei Mercury ($179.99, 4.5 stars) is the best prepaid smartphone in America right now. It has a terrific 4-inch display, a good camera, great call quality, and a fast 1.4GHz processor. Folks looking for more Android power on low-cost plans should also consider Virgin Mobile's Motorola Triumph (4 stars, $279.99) and Boost Mobile's Samsung Galaxy Prevail ($149.99, 4 stars), both of which use Sprint's nationwide 3G network.And if you decide you want unlimited music, download Rhapsody or Spotify.

Alex Colon is the managing editor of PCMag's consumer electronics team. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in English Writing and Literature from Pace University and got his start editing books before deciding technology would probably be a lot more fun.
Though he does the majority of his reading and writing on various digital displays, Alex still loves to sit down and read a good, old-fashioned, paper and ink book in his free time. (Not that there's anything wrong with ebook readers.)
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